This seems to be the year of John Keats: in July, his house was reopened to the public in Hampstead Heath, London, and this week, “Bright Star”, the new film about Keats’ brief love affair with Fanny Brawne, opens in theatres. Directed by Jane Campion, the movie got a lovely review in the New York Times and I hope that Campion will do for Keats what she did for Henry James in her wonderful adaptation of “The Portrait of a Lady”, one of my favorite books.
Intrigued by the recent Keats renaissance of sorts, I made a trip to the library in search of his poems – thus far, poor Mr. Keats had been rather overshadowed by Percy Shelley and Lord Byron in my modest study of 19th century poets. Reading Keats over the past few weeks, though, I’ve been struck by how beautifully fresh and almost modern his verse seems, unmarred by the dusty coverlet of nearly two centuries. His words have such a delightful elegance and I’m continually amazed just how much he matured in such a short life — his poems have a depth that’s remarkable when you consider that he was only 25 when he died.
As the Times stated, no movie can ever fully capture the exquisiteness of his poetry as it appears on the page, but I hope that “Bright Star” will at the very least encourage a new generation, like me, to pick up a volume of his work and appreciate the purity of his genius. I’m certainly inspired to read, in addition to his verse, the Keats biography written by Britain’s former poet laureate, Andrew Motion. And, as I have a weakness for both Romantic poets and romantic movies, “Bright Star” is definitely my must-see film for the fall (it comes to Stamford’s Avon Theater on Friday, Sept. 25).
Here’s a taste of the poem that, I assume, inspired the film’s title. Interestingly, a line from another of Keats’ poems, “Ode to a Nightingale”, provided the title for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Tender is the Night.”
BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art—
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—
No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
Reading Rainbow, a favorite from my childhood, is to end its 26-year run, NPR reports. I’m so sad. How will kids know what to read without LeVar Burton?
As the summer melts blissfully into the thick, sultry humidity of August, the library can become a delicious oasis of cool; the air-conditioned stacks of arid-smelling books and chilled silence of the hushed reading rooms are a delight on the hottest, muggiest of days. What could possibly be more delicious, more satisfying and better suited to cut the cloying heat of a sticky mid-afternoon than the delectably bookish pleasure of library-themed ice cream?
That’s right — Ben & Jerry’s is considering the launch of a library-themed ice cream flavor, spurred by the campaign of New Jersey librarian Andy Woodworth. Woodworth wanted to bring attention to the current plight of the public library, suffering beneath the burden of slashed budgets, so he embarked on this crusade to combine the academic with the gastronomic. His Facebook group to support the idea has already garnered over 4,000 eager followers and more are sure to follow in the trail of such a delicious idea. After all, if Jerry Garcia, Dave Matthews and Stephen Colbert can inspire their own flavors, why not the library?
A few of flavor ideas being bandied around already sound scrumptious:
- “Gooey Decimal System = Dark fudge alphabet letters with caramel swirls in hazelnut ice cream.”
- “Cookie Bookie = a combination of cookie bits!”
- “Li-Berry Pie = Lime sherbet mixed with raspberry sauce and pie crust crumbles (cinnamon sugar, butter, piecrust).”
- “Rocky Read = vanilla with chocolate covered nuts chocolate chunks and raisins.”
- “Sh-sh-sh-Sherbet! = Key Lime or a Chocolate/Vanilla combination.”
- “Malt Whitman” = malt ice cream with chocolate alphabet letters and two caramel and fudge swirls.”
The Facebook group includes a link where interested bookworms and ice cream afincianados alike can suggest a flavor right to Ben & Jerry’s. Personally, I’d vote for “Gooey Decimal System” but does anyone have any other mouth-watering suggestions?
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And, in other food-related news, I found this post in the New Yorker book blog that just made me smile — the team at The Book Bench “decided it would make sense to put on our Zagat hats and reduce great works of fiction to mediocre restaurants.” Suggestions include “The Sound and the Curry”, “Rabbits at Rest Free-Range BBQ”, “War and Pizza”, “Grapes of Wrath” winebar and “Animal Farm”, a gastro-pub where the sausage “occasionally talks back.” Dinner, anyone?
When I interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt back on Jan. 20, in anticipation of his talk at Purchase (N.Y.) College the following week, he sounded positively vibrant. His incisive remarks on the American education system, memoir writing and the inauguration of President Barack Obama bespoke a man who was still very much passionate about his life and surroundings. My friend, a university instructor and resident of Roxbury — McCourt lived there part-time — mentioned on Facebook that he saw the author six months ago at the supermarket, “and he looked great.”
So I was shocked and saddened when I read in the New York Times yesterday that McCourt had passed away in his Manhattan apartment. According to Malachy McCourt, his younger brother and fellow author, the 78-year-old Brooklyn native had been suffering from meningitis and had recently been treated for metastatic melanoma. He is survived by his wife, Ellen Frey and daughter, Margaret McCourt.
Though I was surprised by his death, I was even more astounded to learn during our interview that McCourt, now considered among the most brilliant writers of the 20th century, was once paralyzed by self-doubt. It was the late ’60s when McCourt graduated from Brooklyn College and he decided to play it safe as he searched for a viable career.
“I didn’t have enough self confidence to say I was a writer,” he said. “I dreaded poverty. I had to find secure employment with a weekly wage. I didn’t see myself working for a corporation.”
So, he turned to teaching.
As a student reared in Ireland’s strict Catholic schools, he had rejected the system’s iron-handed pedagogy and dropped out when he was 13. He took that defiant approach to McKee Technical High School in Staten Island — his first teaching stint — where he engaged his pupils on a personal level. He shared stories about his childhood in the slums of Limerick, Ireland and moving to America and encouraged his students to share their stories as well.
His students may have been wary of those methods at first — McCourt observed they were more concerned with good grades than with actual learning — but eventually, they grew to enjoy his class and of course, his poignant and often hilarious anecdotes.
“And the more I talked about my own life, the more I found it interesting as well,” McCourt recalled. “That’s what made me decide to write.”
My perusal of E.M. Forster’s classic novel began with such good intentions. With wholesome, faintly academic fervor, I embraced the prospect of reading the imperishable “A Room With a View” after several months of contemporary fiction. I love modern novelists, but I was ready to return, for a moment, to 1908, the year the novel was published. And, this was a book, I’d been told by many, that everyone must read, one of those timeless, inimitable pieces of literature that should not only be read thoroughly but absorbed with reverence for its merit and splendor. Settling on my couch, flanked by a cat and a cup of tea, I opened the book, fully prepared for merit and splendor.
Like Forster’s young heroine, Lucy Honeychurch, my initial reaction to the opening pages was pragmatic and studious. I strolled through the paragraphs much like Lucy strolled through the glorious churches of Florence, painstakingly searching for the praised frescoes of Giotto with the aid of Baedeker, her indispensable guidebook. I ventured into Forster’s prose with the air of a somewhat nervous tourist, armed for sightseeing. Ooh, look at his wonderful diction, succinct and yet so evocative! And how artlessly he deploys his humor! Ah, such skill and mastery. I chuckled with appreciative laughter over sentences like this one, describing the fussy British chaperone:
Miss Bartlett was already seated on a tightly stuffed armchair, which had the colour and contours of a tomato. She was talking to Mr. Beebe, and as she spoke, her long, narrow head drove backwards and forwards, slowly, regularly, as though she were demolishing some invisible obstacle.
Oh, Mr. Forster. With deft strokes, he paints a sharp and accurate portrait of the British upper classes abroad — eager for a Fashionably Exotic Adventure, but priggish and suspicious of foreigners, unwilling to completely leave their comfortable Britannia behind.
This blog got me thinking (which I guess is exactly what it’s supposed to do) about what books from our time will be considered classics generations from now — providing, of course, that people still read and don’t just have info shoved into their brain through a computer chip embedded in their skull.
I realize I’m not going out on any great limb here. Chabon, and this book in particular, have been roundly praised. But it has stayed with me longer than anything I’ve read in a long, long time. Not just the book itself, but also the actual experience of reading it, the continual, jaw-dropping wonder at the sheer talent jumping off every page.
I tend to prefer writers who don’t let their words get in the way of the story they’re telling. But this was one of the rare times I enjoyed a book as much for the writing itself as for the story the words told (which, by the way, is extraordinary.) What it feels like to be able to use the language the way Chabon does I can only imagine, but it’s thrilling to witness. It’s worth reading him just to see the metaphors and similes he creates.
Plus the book deals with some of my favorite subjects: the immigrant experience; past eras of New York City; and, most of all, comic books.
What are some of the books written in the last 10 years or so that you think deserve to be considered classics years from now?
For November, I'll be reading American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham, which won the Pulitzer Prize last year. We'll update our book club selection for December and January shortly.
Marilyn Ramos is a partner at the Stamford litigation law firm of Silver Golub & Teitell. She is a member of the Connecticut Trial Lawyers Association and the Connecticut Bar Association. She is currently on the Board of Directors of the Fairfield County Bar Association and the Fairfield County Bar Foundation. She received her law degree from Pace University School of Law in 1989 and is a member of the Connecticut and New York bars. Prior to her career in law, she was a teacher with the Greenwich Public Schools and worked for the Stamford Human Rights Commission. Her views expressed on this blog are completely her own and do not represent those of Silver Golub & Teitell.
Roy J. Nirschel is president of Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. He grew up in Stamford and his father was a firefighter on the West Side. He received his bachelor's degree from Southern Connecticut State University and went on to receive a master's degree in public administration and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Miami. He has traveled around the world, visiting 35 countries, but said, "I can’t credit on the road with getting me on the road."
